Occupying Wall Street 140 Characters at a Time

By Demetria Irwin on October 12th, 2011

Occupy Wall Street is a movement. It's a real life 21st century movement in these here United States of America. We watched several countries literally catch fire in revolutionary fervor this year (and Egypt is still keeping that fire going) and many here were left wondering about where/when/how would our own revolution take place.

Is it now?

New York Magazine provided a snapshot of the Occupy Wall Street protesters with a 100-person poll of the folks currently camped out in downtown Manhattan's Zuccotti Park. They found that the people in their poll were mostly 20-somethings who are "fed up with Democrats and believe the country needs an overhaul" and they believed in Obama, but have been disappointed. They want change. They aren't anti-capitalism, but they are anti-getting run over by policies that favor the wealthiest one percent.

Philanthropist and hip hop business mogul Russell Simmons has been an active participant in the movement and he brought along pal Kanye West for a little action just the other day. Ye, whose gluttonous but quite good Watch the Throne album with fellow millionaire Jay-Z has already gone platinum, declined to give any statements to the press. He did show up though (sans much jewelry outside of a gold grill on his bottom teeth) and according to Russ, Kanye has been aligned with the movement "in spirit."

If you're on Twitter and like me you have tons of in-the-know friends or if you just follow newsorganizations and certain celebrities, no doubt your timeline has been exploding with the ubiquitous #OWS hashtag and links to opinion pieces, infographics and videos of the NYPD giving protestors a taste of the baton and pepper spray.

I live in New York City and I have not gone down to Wall Street to participate in or record the goings on of the Occupy Wall Street movement. As far as the recording part, there's been a lot of that (now) and as far as participating, I'm not quite clear on what defines success for these protesters. What makes one decide to de-camp? A particular bill? A particular election? Is there anything that could be done right now-ish that would take the protests down a notch or in a different direction? Most of my friends could say the same save for a few who literally stopped by the protest. I am glad that people feel passionate enough to take a physical and theoretical/philosophical stance against what they believe to be unjust, but so far I haven't been moved to join in myself, not in a physical way anyway.

I've lent my online support in the way of tweets and Facebook status messages and links, but no real sacrifices on my part. In 50 years, will we be like Herman Cain being questioned by people who wonder how we could not have participated in this? (Herman Cain was a student at Morehouse from '63-'67 and did not participate in the Civil Rights Movement.)

Occupy Wall Street has spread all over the country with varying rates of participation and police response, but for now, for me, I'm content with my armchair activism and research. I'm intrigued by this hint of revolutionary excitement and I hope it somehow manages to create real change and I hope it spreads to other important issues. After all, we have a generation of children lost to sub-par public education and easy access to childhood-slashing information and experiences.

So Occupy Wall Street, I stand with you, 140 characters at a time. Is that cool? #OWS

Why Occupy Wall Street isn't about a list of demands

By Julianne Pepitone @CNNMoneyTech October 12, 2011: 12:21 PM ET

Occupy Wall Street is still going strong after 25 days.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A lot of lip service has been paid to the idea that Occupy Wall Street lacks focus. The critics ask: What's the goal of these protests? Everyone wants something different.

Which is exactly the point.

It's easy to trivialize Occupy Wall Street -- even as it inspires similar protests around the country -- by saying the movement lacks an end game. The group is trying to crowdsource its list of goals, which all but guarantees that no major ones will be set.

A demand list of sorts has appeared on the official Occupy Wall Street page, serving as an ever-changing document on which people can comment with their own suggestions. It has also served as fodder for critics like Fox News, which posted a version of the list and suggested that readers "try not to laugh."

But no list has been endorsed by the "general assembly" at Occupy Wall Street, says press team member Mark Bray, who added that "making a list of three or four demands would have ended the conversation before it started."

Occupy Wall Street has already achieved what it set out to do.

Like the "Arab Spring" uprisings that inspired its tactics, the word-of-mouth demonstration has tapped into a collective anger. Some protesters are upset about taxation; for others, the big issue is the high unemployment rate. Or corporate greed. Or the distribution of wealth.

How Occupy Wall Street has evolved

For all the individual reasons that draw people to Occupy Wall Street, a similar undercurrent ties the protesters together. They're upset about inequities in their country. They're angry. They want their voices to be heard.

"The guys in Washington are supposed to be helping me, but they don't get it with their mansions and their millions," says an unemployed nurse at the protest on Wednesday, who declined to give her name. "They don't understand my situation and they don't want to hear me. Well, now they'll have to hear all of us."

Lawmakers including President Obama have weighed in on Occupy Wall Street, with many sympathetic to the emotion behind the protests. Large labor unions, including the AFL-CIO and SEIU, have joined in. Media outlets are at the scene in droves. Even a corporate board has shown support: Ben & Jerry's directors released a statement "to express our deepest admiration."

The mere fact that the protest is still going strong after 25 days is means it has met one of its goals: Organizers said from the start that they hoped to sustain their demonstration for two months. Occupy Wall Street's real goal has always been simple: Draw focus to the concerns -- and anger -- many Americans have about the country's growing economic gap, plant the seed of an organized voice, and let the protest evolve naturally.

As part of that evolution, solidarity protests have popped up in Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Denver and Chicago, among other cities.

"We don't want New York to form its own political agenda and drive the conversation in other cities," Bray says. "I would be unhappy if people in LA or Chicago were waiting on us to do something. That would be politics as usual."

That's why Occupy Wall Street isn't focused on a demand list, Bray says.

"To tell everyone that we have the solution to their specific problems, that would be what the political parties are already doing," Bray says. "That isn't working. And that's the whole point."

The original plan was to continue the occupation for two months, and then wrap it up. But Bray says that "has been entirely thrown out the window, and we have no set timeframe in mind."

So what happens as the weeks go on?

That's up to the crowd. Occupy Wall Street is a symbolic protest, but with the economy still sputtering and the wealth gap growing, it's a potent symbol.  

First Published: October 12, 2011: 6:01 AM ET

 

Wall Street closed as protesters march

Davis' death robs NFL of an iconic, one-of-a-kind presence

Despite his controversial nature, Al Davis left an indelible mark on the game of football. AP

The NFL is never going to be the same. On Saturday morning, it lost its last true original, when Al Davis died.

The first time I met Davis, it was the early '90s and I was standing on a foggy training camp field in Oxnard -- another one of the weird stops in Davis' apparent effort to take over California.

I was a bold young reporter. So I introduced myself, exchanged a couple of inconsequential comments and asked the then-Los Angeles Raiders boss why Marcus Allen was in his doghouse.

Davis looked at me.

"Do you want to be my friend?" he growled ominously. And then ended the conversation before I could answer.

The answer, by the way, was no. I didn't want to be his friend. But I did want to write about him, an urge that only grew the longer I stayed in the sports writing business.

Because Davis was perhaps the most unique, odd and fascinating person I have ever come across.

Davis was, indeed, a maverick -- the term often used to describe him. He honed that reputation long before my time, as Raiders head coach at 33 and commissioner of the renegade AFL at 36. But when I was a child, as a young fan of the Raiders, Davis meant little to me. The Raiders were about larger-than-life John Madden and Kenny Stabler. Not about the weird guy on the sidelines in the tracksuit.

But when Davis moved the Raiders to Los Angeles, abandoning the best fans in football for an uninterested demographic -- well, then he had my full attention. And kept it for the next 30 years, until he died at 82 on Saturday.

On the day he returned to Oakland in 1995, I sat with him while he ate a hamburger with ketchup brought to him by an obsequious assistant. I watched as grown men -- graying, big, strong football players -- waited on him like paid valets. It was an historic day for Oakland but my main memory is Davis' fixation on his hamburger and the others' fixation on Davis.

He demanded loyalty and was said to have a heart of gold if he cared about you. And if you crossed him, you were dead to him.

We never became friends, but I'm pretty sure he knew a lot about me. There were rumors that he checked up on the background of every reporter who came in contact with his beloved team. He often had one of his people call up to harass a relatively new reporter about something he or she had written. I received a few of those phone calls in the early days. Eventually, though, the phone calls would stop and a form of détente was reached.

Every season, the media would wait for "the State of the Al." When Davis appeared behind a microphone, it was can't-miss theater. Sometimes a whole season would go by without an appearance. But inevitably, he would have to fire a coach and hire another one and take the stage.

The endless hirings and firings were horrible for the Raiders. But they were good for the media -- another appearance by Davis. Sometimes with an overhead projector. Or a lawsuit to talk about.

When he did talk, even as he became more and more frail in recent years, he was sharp. He would discuss the state of the newspaper business, world history. He always had a good sense of humor -- somewhat surprising since he always kept some of the most humorless souls in sports on his payroll. He could still surprise; for instance, admitting that he made a mistake with JaMarcus Russell after announcing at one press conference that Russell was going to be great.

In his last public appearance, last January, Davis used the hiring of Hue Jackson as an occasion to vivisect his former coach Tom Cable. It was a pure Davis moment.

At one point he said, "I have made mistakes, no question. You're saying, 'Should I take some of the blame?' I certainly do. You guys give it to me."

Davis was absolutely to blame for much of what's gone wrong with the Raiders over the recent years. But the team was his all-consuming passion. And it's impossible to imagine what the team and the franchise will be without him.

The Raiders may be on the right track now, and I was privately rooting for them because I knew how fascinating it would be to see Davis with a winning team one more time. It became a cliché and so many of his actions seemed to run contrary to the thought, but the most important thing to Davis really was to "just win, baby."

We all knew Davis would die at some point. I just never imagined it would be on an October Saturday, with a big game looming the next day.

The NFL will never be the same.

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/ann_killion/10/08/al.davis/index.html#ixzz1aEU1hhtg

Anti-Wall Street protests spread across U.S

Protests against Wall Street entered their 18th day on Tuesday as demonstrators across the country show their anger over the wobbly economy and what they see as corporate greed by marching on Federal Reserve banks and camping out in parks from Los Angeles to Portland, Maine.

Demonstrations are expected to continue throughout the week as more groups hold organisational meetings and air their concerns on websites and through streaming video.

In Manhattan on Monday, hundreds of protesters dressed as corporate zombies in white face paint lurched past the New York Stock Exchange clutching fistfuls of fake money. In Chicago, demonstrators pounded drums in the city’s financial district. Others pitched tents or waved protest signs at passing cars in Boston, St. Louis, Kansas City, Missouri, and Los Angeles.

A slice of America’s discontented, from college students worried about their job prospects to middle-age workers who have been recently laid off, were galvanised after the arrests of 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge over the weekend.

Some protesters likened themselves to the tea party movement but with a liberal bent or to the Arab Spring demonstrators who brought down their rulers in the Middle East.

“We feel the power in Washington has actually been compromised by Wall Street,” said Jason Counts, a computer systems analyst and one of about three dozen protesters in St. Louis. “We want a voice, and our voice has slowly been degraded over time.”

The Occupy Wall Street protests started on September 17 with a few dozen demonstrators who tried to pitch tents in front of the New York Stock Exchange. Since then, hundreds have set up camp in a park nearby and have become increasingly organised, lining up medical aid and legal help and printing their own newspaper, the Occupied Wall Street Journal.

About 100 demonstrators were arrested on September 24 and some were pepper-sprayed. On Saturday police arrested 700 on charges of disorderly conduct and blocking a public street as they tried to march over the Brooklyn Bridge. Police said they took five more protesters into custody on Monday, though it was unclear whether they had been charged with any crime.

“At this point, we don’t anticipate wider unrest,” said Tim Flannelly, an FBI spokesman in New York, “but should it occur the city, including the NYPD and the FBI, will deploy any and all resources necessary to control any developments.”

Mr. Flannelly said he does not expect the New York protests to develop into the often-violent demonstrations that have rocked cities in the United Kingdom since the summer. But he said the FBI is “monitoring the situation and will respond accordingly.”

Wiljago Cook, of Oakland, California, who joined the New York protest on the first day, said she was shocked by the arrests.

“Exposing police brutality wasn’t even really on my agenda, but my eyes have been opened,” she said. She vowed to stay in New York “as long as it seems useful.”

City bus drivers sued the New York Police Department on Monday for commandeering their buses and making them drive to the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday to pick up detained protesters.

“We’re down with these protesters. We support the notion that rich folk are not paying their fair share,” said Transport Workers Union President John Samuelsen. “Our bus operators are not going to be pressed into service to arrest protesters anywhere.”

The city’s Law Department said the NYPD’s actions were proper.

On Monday, the zombies stayed on the sidewalks as they wound through Manhattan’s financial district chanting, “How to fix the deficit- End the war, tax the rich!” They lurched along with their arms in front of them. Some yelled, “I smell money!”

Reaction was mixed from passers-by.

Roland Klingman, who works in the financial industry and was wearing a suit as he walked through a raucous crowd of protesters, said he could sympathise with the anti-Wall Street message.

“I don’t think it’s directed personally at everyone who works down here,” Mr. Klingman said. “If they believe everyone down here contributes to policy decisions, it’s a serious misunderstanding.”

Another man in a suit yelled at the protesters, “Go back to work!” He declined to be interviewed.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who made his fortune as a corporate executive, has said the demonstrators are making a mistake by targeting Wall Street.

“The protesters are protesting against people who make $40- or $50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet. That’s the bottom line. Those are the people who work on Wall Street or in the finance sector,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a radio interview Friday.

Some protesters planned to travel to other cities to organize similar events.

John Hildebrand, a protester in New York from Norman, Oklahoma, hoped to mount a protest there after returning home Tuesday. Julie Levine, a protester in Los Angeles, planned to go to Washington on Thursday.

Websites and Facebook pages with names like Occupy Boston and Occupy Philadelphia have also sprung up to plan the demonstrations.

Hundreds of demonstrators marched from a tent city on a grassy plot in downtown Boston to the Statehouse to call for an end of corporate influence of government.

“Our beautiful system of American checks and balances has been thoroughly trashed by the influence of banks and big finance that have made it impossible for the people to speak,” said protester Marisa Engerstrom, of Somerville, Massachusetts, a Harvard doctoral student.

The Boston demonstrators decorated their tents with hand-written signs reading, “Fight the rich, not their wars” and “Human need, not corporate greed.”

Some stood on the sidewalk holding up signs, engaging in debate with passers-by and waving at honking cars. One man yelled “Go home!” from his truck. Another man made an obscene gesture.

Patrick Putnam, a 27-year-old chef from Framingham, Mass., said he’s standing up for the 99 per cent of Americans who have no say in what happens in government.

“We don’t have voices, we don’t have lobbyists, so we’ve been pretty much neglected by Washington,” he said.

In Chicago, protesters beat drums on the corner near the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In Los Angeles, demonstrators hoping to get TV coverage gathered in front of the courthouse where Michael Jackson’s doctor is on trial on manslaughter charges.

Protesters in St. Louis stood on a street corner a few blocks from the shimmering Gateway Arch, carrying signs that read, “How Did The Cat Get So Fat?,” “You’re a Pawn in Their Game” and “We Want The Sacks Of Gold Goldman Sachs Stole From Us.”

“Money talks, and it seems like money has all the power,” said Apollonia Childs. “I don’t want to see any homeless people on the streets, and I don’t want to see a veteran or elderly people struggle. We all should have our fair share. We all vote, pay taxes. Tax the rich.”

APThis Oct. 3, 2011 photo shows people protesting Wall Street greed, corporate corruption and related issues continue their campout on the lawn of Los Angeles City Hall, in concert with demonstrations in other cities including New York.

Occupying Wall Street, demanding accountability

By Alan Silverleib, CNN

updated 5:53 AM EST, Tue October 4, 2011

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Occupy Wall Street is a protest movement covering a range of issues, with no clear leadership
• Many of the protesters are upset with growing wealth divide in the United States
• Nobody's being held accountable, one protester complains
• It's too soon to clearly label the movement, Stanford sociologist Susan Olzak says

Editor's note: Are you participating in the protests? Share your photos and video with CNN iReport.

(CNN) -- Hero Vincent has a dream: to see the titans of Wall Street trade their palatial office suites for a row of dank prison cells.

The crime? Theft. Stealing billion-dollar, taxpayer-funded bailouts. Getting rich on your dime while you struggle to make ends meet.

And if you're tired of standing by while the rich get richer and the middle class crumbles, he has a suggestion: Take it to the streets.

Vincent, 21 and unemployed, has suddenly become one of several unofficial spokesmen for Occupy Wall Street, a leaderless protest movement made largely of twenty-somethings upset with the state of the economy, the state of the war in Afghanistan, the state of the environment, and the state of America and the world in general.

If that sounds vague, it's meant to be. In less than three weeks, the movement has become a magnet for countless disaffected Americans. And at a time when an overwhelming majority of Americans say the country's on the wrong track, there's no shortage of new potential recruits.

Photos: 'Occupy Wall Street' protests

On Saturday, more than 700 protesters were arrested for blocking the Brooklyn Bridge. A splinter group called Occupy Chicago touted a "huge afternoon march." In Boston, 34 groups -- unions and other organizations focused on everything from foreclosure prevention to climate change -- marched for "an economy that works for all of us," according to one website.

Over on the West Coast, Occupy Los Angeles kicked off with a march to City Hall. In Seattle, demonstrators touted "a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors (and) genders."

On Monday, a live video feed from Occupy Wall Street was featured at the start of a three-day conference of progressive leaders in Washington.

What does it all mean?

"We're here for different reasons," said Vincent, whose father is also unemployed and recently went through a home foreclosure. "But at the end of the day, it all boils down to one thing, and that's accountability. We want accountability for the connection between Wall Street and the politicians."

"Something has to change," he told CNN. "We're out here because we're tired of what's been going on."

Giles Clarke, a 46-year-old freelance photographer and father of two, echoes Vincent's call for greater accountability.

"People have simply had enough," Clarke said. "We're living in an age where the inequality between high-end Wall Street and the (rest of us) is simply a gap that has become too big. Millions of people have lost their jobs. Millions of people have lost their homes."

There's been, Clarke said, "way too much cloak-and-dagger activity within the corridors of Wall Street" in recent years. "This is about raising awareness and a change of political discourse."

The average person, according to Vincent, "is just fed up because there's no more middle class. The margin between us and the employers is so great now. Where will we be in a couple of years?"

Does he actually want to occupy Wall Street and shut it down?

"We want to educate people," Vincent said. But "if Wall Street actually shuts down, we'll be happy about it."

The movement "feels like something that will ultimately spread like the Arab spring," said Egberto Willies, a CNN iReporter in Washington. "I call it the American autumn."

Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots have clear strains of liberal economic populism -- a powerful force in U.S. history during various times characterized by growing economic stress. That said, it could be a mistake to label or tie the movement to a specific agenda, said Susan Olzak, a Stanford University sociology professor.

"It's difficult to classify a social protest movement early on in its history," Olzak told CNN. "Clearer goals could eventually emerge, but there's no guarantee."

"Many movements fizzle out. Others become more organized," she said. But "I think we run a risk (by) taking a snapshot at any one point in time, and trying to categorize the movement in any one way based on that snapshot. The only way to study these protest movements is to follow them over time."

If Vincent, Willies and Clarke have their way, there will be plenty of time for this movement to continue to grow and evolve. Some observers question if it could become a liberal counterweight to the conservative populism of the tea party.

For his part, Clarke predicts the movement will go international in the next few months.

"Let's get talking," he urged. "Let's have some of these issues looked at."

CNN's Greg Botelho and Maggie Lake contributed to this report.

Protesters hold up signs that read, "If only the war on poverty was a real war, then we would actually be putting money into it," and "Wall Street has the real weapons of mass destruction."